Viral Marketing in Films

Viral marketing is a way of promoting a film by having awareness of the film spread across an audience, mostly via word of mouth. It is cost-effective, making it an effective marketing tool for small-budget, independent films like Shifty.

Shifty's viral marketing campaign was an email campaign, allowing users to 'frame' a mate by uploading a picture of them participating in a drug deal.  However, the campaign was soon banned by the advertising standards agency. Arguably, this worked in the film's favour because the media attention that the campaign generated would also result in more publicity for the film.

Larger, more mainstream films also have viral marketing campaigns. Perhaps the most successful example of this was The Dark Knight's viral marketing campaign.

The Dark Knight's viral marketing campaign  gave a checklist fans for fans to complete to uncover information about the unreleased film. Eventually, the 'whysoserious' viral site showed the first picture of Joker along with 'see you in
december'

This type of marketing was unconventional because it pulled in an audience making them find out information, rather than conventional means of marketing when information is pushed into an audience.

Film Poster Research

A film poster is a means of advertising a film by designing a poster that illustrates the theme, background, characters, title and release date of a film. A successful film poster needs to persuade an audience to watch the film, as well as informing an audience when and where they can watch a film.

A conventional theme that is used in almost all film posters is the text at the bottom of the poster. The text gives details on the cast, production and distribution companies that were involved with the film. The font used in this piece of text is called 'Steel Tongs'

It is also conventional for film posters to have a slogan / tag line. Tag lines should be like a marketing pitch to an audience, persuading them to watch the film.

'Your mind is the scene of the crime' subtely gives away hints of the film's storyline to the audience, as well as showing the genre of the film. I also think it hooks the audience into wanting to know more about the film.
Another important aspect of this film poster is that it states some of the director's previous work. Because of this, its suggesting that fans of Nolan's 'The Dark Knight' could like 'Inception'

Before the age of digital design, film posters were often constructed with illustrations of artist's interpretations of the film. Saul Bass' work is a notable example of this. As well as title sequence design, he also designed film posters.


Saul Bass' film poster for Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' is designed well because it looks strange and eccentric.

I liked this film poster because of how the numbers / code forms the picture of Gary Oldman, I think it links to the conventions of espionage / spy thriller films. It also uses conventional cast listing that most film posters use. In addition to this, the tag line states that the film is based on a classic novel. This helps to persuade the audience to watch the film because the book was good, suggesting that the film would be good as well. 



Shot List

analysis of title sequence+credit sequence

The Godfather

The godfather logo

the godfather shares the same or similar conventions as our film in addition to being considered one of the best in its genre. while the film is different content wise to our film i think that the title sequence does more with less and can be well recognised.

this shot shows the actors in a dim, graphic novel sort of shot , giving them an air of malice.

this shot shows some actors in what looks like the beginning of a family tree but is actually a hand holding a puppets strings suggesting that the people in the film are just puppets in a grand scheme

Elliptical editing

Elliptical editing

This is an example of elliptical editing. The video we produced shows a journey of a chair from the 4th floor of our college to the ground floor. Usually, this would take a couple of minutes, although because of elliptical editing, we were able to cut out parts of the journey but still keep continuity. 

We did this because it allows us to practice before we started filming our short film. Because of this, it ensures our short film would be of a better quality. 

Props/costumes photos, planning + research

list of props/costume:
we will require a number of different props to include in the film. these props would be:

• a replica pistol (x1 revolver x1 semi auto)
• balaclava (x2)
• suitable money container e.g. folder, briefcase (x1)
• black clothing or at least dark clothing, without logos or prints preferred (will be supplied and worn by the actors)

• money, actual legal tender would make the film seem more authentic but would be either a target for thieves or if it where lost then the owner would obviously have lost a sum of money. fake money could be used but may make the situation in the film seem to be quite farcical. Open to group discussion.
  
  

Analysis of similar full movie

The Town

This movie is similar at the beginning as it has a scenes of crime and in specific a robbery.  The film starts with scenes of bank robbery. They use a lot short and fast scenes to make it more action based. A good idea that this movie uses is the use of masks. It gives it more realism and makes it more tense as the audience are not sure who is robbing the bank. Having masks would be challenging as you cant use face expressions, it will mean the actors have a challenging task to show emotions without usage of face

Scripts